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Four short links: 23 November 2009 - Scams, Swirl, Crisis, and Coasters
November 23, 2009
Top E-Tailers Profiting From Scams -- Vertrue, Webloyalty, and Affinion generated more than $1.4 billion by "misleading" Web shoppers, said members of the U.S. Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation. [...] The government says the investigation shows that [the companies] "trick" consumers into entering their e-mail address just before they complete purchases at sites such as Orbitz, Priceline.com, Buy.com, 1-800 Flowers, Continental Airlines, Fandango, and Classmates.com. This and more in today's Four Short Links.
Watching the Retweeted Get Retweeted-er: Power User Secret Retweetist Love
November 22, 2009
When Twitter decided to slowly roll out a new, official retweeting feature, people waited in anticipation. When it actually became available, people almost universally disliked it. But my post is about why I love the new Twitter retweet feature, without ever having to think about it. The reason is that official retweeting represents the new-new arms race for authority among power users.
Health gets personal in the cloud - Google Health Beta and Microsoft's My Health Info
November 19, 2009
Healthcare in the near future will be quite different than it is today. Web enabled technology is already changing the way medicine is practiced. As the digital nation comes of age we will see new opportunities, and new challenges, bringing healthcare in America into the 21st century. Health consumers will come to expect they will have control over their own health data. Having secure, interoperable access to clinical data will allow patients to partner with their care providers in new ways incorporating Web 2.0 principles.
E-Readers Up Close: Using the Sony PRS-700
November 18, 2009
William Stanek here, continuing with the in-depth look at e-readers and e-books. The recap: In my earlier blog entries, I've explored the ins and outs of e-ink, electronic paper displays (EPDs) and e-readers. Now, I'm examining individual readers as a case study in how e-readers work. As I stated in previous posts, my hope is that if you are better informed, you can decide whether e-readers are right for you. So here's another installment in the Sony Reader discussion, focusing on the features of the Sony PRS-700.
The iPhone: Tricorder Version 1.0?
November 18, 2009
The iPhone, in addition to revolutionizing how people thought about mobile phone user interfaces, also was one of the first devices to offer a suite of sensors measuring everything from the visual environment to position to acceleration, all in a package that could fit in your shirt pocket. On December 3rd, O'Reilly will be offering a one-day online edition of the Where 2.0 conference, focusing on the iPhone sensors, and what you can do with them.
What Does Innovative Social Engagement Look Like For Businesses and Governments?
November 18, 2009
I've been thinking about the topic of Government 2.0 a lot lately. Part of this topic deals with the multi-directional engagement between government and citizens. It seems to me that everyone can celebrate the fact that government entities merely have a YouTube channel here, a Twitter account there, or a Blogger profile some other place (the so-called "TGIF revolution"), or we can think a little harder about what the goals of citizen engagement really might be, and how to go about achieving them.
Four short links: 17 November 2009 - Digital Natives, Supersexy C64 Debugger, a Google Tripwire, and a Patient Botnet
November 17, 2009
ICU64 -- an open source Commodore 64 emulator (Frodo) hacked to visually and textually display memory. Watch the video embedded below, it's hypnotic and seductive. It immediately made me want one for my programs (without having to port my code back to 6502 assembler). (via waxy whose return from pneumonia is greatly welcomed)
The War For the Web
November 16, 2009
It is becoming clear to me that we are heading into a bloody period of competition that could be extremely unfriendly to the interoperable web as we know it today. If you've followed my thinking about Web 2.0 from the beginning, you know that I believe we are engaged in a long term project to build an internet operating system. I've outlined a few of the ways that big players like Facebook, Apple, and News Corp are potentially breaking the "small pieces loosely joined" model of the Internet. But perhaps most threatening of all are the natural monopolies created by Web 2.0 network effects. We're facing the prospect of Facebook as the platform, Apple as the platform, Google as the platform, Amazon as the platform, where big companies slug it out until one is king of the hill. And it's time for developers to take a stand. If you don't want a repeat of the PC era, place your bets now on open systems. Don't wait till it's too late.
URI Manager Utility
November 16, 2009
Advanced Flash Tactics or AFTs are techniques that come from deep within the Flash Art Of War, the oldest Flash military treatise in the world. In this AFT I will go over - URI Manager Utility. In the past I have talked about using RegEx to create a utility for replacing tokens in a string. My uri manager utility follows the same concept but helps you organize all of your URIs in a external file. Not only that but when you request them when, you can customize their values on the fly. Whether you are keeping track of 1 or 100+ URIs this simple utility will help make your life way easier.
Featured Gov2.0 Video: Cybersecurity Challenge - The Future of War is in Cyberspace
By O'Reilly MediaNovember 13, 2009
Converting to Electronic Health Records: fits and starts
November 11, 2009
Data and communications are critical contributors to health care. I recently attended a forum on how my state, Massachusetts, is facilitating the move to Electronic Health Records, a prerequisite for many things doctors, patients, and insurance companies can do to improve health. It's notable that the chief sponsor of the event, the Massachusetts Health Data Consortium, was largely set up by insurance companies. Lots of invective has been thrown at these companies recently, but the questions of technology can pull together the insurers, providers, and patients in a common quest. My own understanding of the progress and frustrations in deploying heath care technology was enhanced by the conversations I had that day and the statistics bandied about.
Four short links: 10 November 2009 - DIY Diagnostic Chips, Genetics on $5k a Genome, Cellphones as Diagnostic Microscopes, AR-Equipped Mechanics Do It Heads-Up
November 10, 2009
A children's toy inspires a cheap, easy production method for high-tech diagnostic chips -- Microfluidic chips (with tiny liquid-filled channels) can cost $100k and more. Michelle Khine used the Shrinky Dinks childrens' toy to make her own. "I thought if I could print out the [designs] at a certain resolution and then make them shrink, I could make channels the right size for microfluidics," she says. This and more in today's Four Short Links!
E-Readers Up Close: Getting to know the Sony Readers, Part 2
November 10, 2009
William Stanek here, continuing with the in-depth look at e-readers and e-books. In my earlier blog entries, I introduced EPDs, discussed how the technology works, and delved briefly into ways they're being used. Now, I'm examining the Sony Reader as a case study in how e-readers work. My hope is that if you are better informed, you can decide whether an e-reader is right for you. And who knows, an e-reader may just replace your MP3 player as your favorite device. And now, back to the Sony Reader discussion of the PRS 505 and the PRS-700.
5 Tips For Flash Unit Testing
November 9, 2009
Advanced Flash Tactics or AFTs are techniques that come from deep within the Flash Art Of War, the oldest Flash military treatise in the world. In this AFT I will go over 5 Tips for Unit Testing. Unit Testing and Test Driven Development are a hot topics in the Flash community lately, especially on Twitter. A few weeks ago, after realizing how complex my F*CSS library was getting, I decided to go back and write FlexUnit test for the library in a hope to use TDD moving forward.
Four short links: 9 November 2009 - Moth Mind Readers, Shiny UI Futures, Usable Newspapers, Hardware Testing
By Nat TorkingtonNovember 9, 2009
New Microsoft Interface Technology -- videos from Craig Mundie (Chief Research and Strategy Officer) on the MS Campus Tour talking about the future of UI using a sexy glass prototype that features tablet PC, gesture, speech recognition, and even eye tracking. Lustable. This and more in today's Four Short Links.
E-Readers Up Close: Getting to know the Sony Readers, Part 1
November 9, 2009
William Stanek here, taking an up close look at e-readers. First up, the Sony e-readers. Sony unveiled its first reader device in January 2006 and the device became available in early 2007. The Sony Reader, like all currently available e-readers, has a black-and-white active matrix EPD display. As with other devices and E Ink itself, the Sony Reader has evolved through several generations of products.
Three Paradoxes of the Internet Age - Part Three
November 9, 2009
As we move from the "web of information" to the "web of people" (aka the Social Web) the output of all of this social participation is massive dossiers on individual behavior (your social network profiles, photos, location, status updates, searches etc.) and social activity. This loss of control over personal information is on a collision course with the law of unintended consequences Amidst this barrage of good news for how much power we wield in the transaction of commerce one has to wonder if we are giving away something quite precious in the bargain.
Four short links: 6 November 2009 - Barcode Scanning, Downloadable Community Book, Gov Hack Day, Android Kludges
November 6, 2009
Red Laser -- "impossibly accurate barcode scanning". Uses Google Product Search to identify products that you scan using the camera on the phone. I remember Rael and I talking to Jeff Bezos about this years ago, before camphones had the resolution to decode barcodes. The future is here and it's $1.99 on the App Store. This and more in today's Four Short Links.
Three Paradoxes of the Internet Age - Part Two
By Joshua-Michéle RossNovember 5, 2009
This gem from Whimsley makes the point - with extensive statistical modeling supporting the argument - that our algorithm-obsessed, long tail merchants are actually depleting the overall choice pool despite the fact that as individuals we may be experiencing a sense of more choice through recommendations engines. "Online merchants such as Amazon, iTunes and Netflix may stock more items than your local book, CD, or video store, but they are no friend to "niche culture". Internet sharing mechanisms such as YouTube and Google PageRank, which distil the clicks of millions of people into recommendations, may also be promoting an online monoculture."
Twitter Approval Matrix - October 2009
November 5, 2009
This is the fifth post for the Twitter Approval Matrix with data that spanned the month of October and different sources such as tweetsentiment.com, scraping archives, and observations. This month I received help from Joe Fernandez the CEO of Klout.com. Joe continues to provide some great 'hard' data that allowed me to better place more items on the grid this month. A quick refresher, the matrix shows four quadrants used to describe trends found on Twitter.
Posterous: The Copy-and-Post Revolution in (Micro) Blogging
November 5, 2009
A friend of mine, who has achieved repeated success in high-tech startup land, said that if you want to be successful, focus on segments where <10% of the crowd currently adopts the solution, and by virtue of dramatically simplifying the approach, you can toggle adoption rates to closer to 90%. Enter Posterous, a micro-blogging tool (it's free) that does a few things really well.
The Network By the Numbers
By Sarah SorensenNovember 5, 2009
We all know the network is everywhere. It's pervasiveness is what makes it the most endearing platform we have to address many of the issues we face today. Thanks to the convergence of increasingly affordable, powerful and mobile devices, access to the network has spread out and infiltrated parts of the globe that have typically remained impervious to previous technology advancements. There are some interesting numbers that I've heard recently that I wanted to highlight to articulate the scale and scope of today's network. Let's start with the fact there are close to 1.7 billion Internet users in the world representing almost one quarter of the world's population. Who are they and what are they doing?
Following Lists - The Twitter Lists Feature is a Game Changer
By Brian AhierNovember 4, 2009
One of the interesting things about the new Lists feature is the expansion of the asymmetrical nature of relationships on Twitter. I use Twitter Lists to control the flow of the fire hose of my data streams into manageable list streams. But another important aspect is the ability to create lists composed of accounts I don't follow. This is radically changing relationships and the way we build communities on Twitter. As Mark Drapeau pointed out it will become more important which lists you are on than who is following you.
Four short links: 3 November 2009 - Electoral Cryptography, Dataless Airport Security, Visualising Transport Data, Mathematically Insecure Social Asymmetry
November 3, 2009
First Test for Election Cryptography (MIT Technology Review) -- The first government election to use a new cryptographic scheme that lets both voters and auditors check that votes were cast and recorded accurately will be held tomorrow in Takoma Park, MD. Founder of the company behind the technology is David Chaum, who ran the first electronic currency company in the 90s. That was ahead of its time (Internet faced a credibility problem, not a convenience problem), but his timing for this seems spot-on. (via timoreilly on Twitter)
Four short links: 2 November 2009 - Inside Botnets, Creating Choropleths, Privacy Simplified, Massively Machiavellian Online Social Gaming
November 2, 2009
Scamville: The Social Gaming Ecosystem of Hell (TechCrunch) -- Many of those games on Facebook that your friends play are evil. To get in-game money or objects, they'll let you take a survey but at the end you're signed up for crap you never wanted. This and more in today's Four Short Links.
The Emerging Twitter List Arms Race
November 2, 2009
I use Twitter a lot, but I was not among the very first to see the new Lists feature. I can now, though. And what I find much more interesting than actually using the feature myself is the fact that I woke up this morning to find that I was on dozens of other people's lists. (In fact, while I was writing this, I turned up on four more!) Even though the irony is that Twitter introduced lists about a year after I stopped wanting such a feature, I do think there is some value in having other people put me on their lists. Braggadocio. Forget about counting your number of followers, or how many retweets you get, those metrics have been blown out for a long time now. The new high fidelity for my vanity is the Twitter list.
Four short links: 28 October 2009 - Great Mail Feature, Speed Talks, Virtualisation History, Science Literacy
October 28, 2009
GMail Labs: Got The Wrong Bob? -- When's the last time you got an email from a stranger asking, "Are you sure you meant to send this to me?" and promptly realized that you didn't? GMail looks at the clusters of CCs you send and, if you normally send to Bob X but are trying to send it to Bob Y, asks you "did you mean Bob X?". This might be the best thing to happen to email since webmail and full-text search--it's ridiculous how little innovation is happening in email given how widely and heavily it is used. This and more in today's Four Short Links.
What sociologist Erving Goffman could tell us about social networking and Internet identity
October 28, 2009
I just finished Erving Goffman's classic sociological text, The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life. A friend told me to read this for an exploration into what "identity" means online, and I did find that the book offers some useful frameworks. It helps us understand the contradictory effects of presenting ourselves online, and identify the opportunities and dangers.
Universal Translators
October 28, 2009
Both DARPA and the U.S. Air Force are working on universal translators, a concept straight out of Star Trek. While government, science and the military work to eliminate a speech Tower of Babel, we (the information security community) have been busy creating our own new Tower of Babel. As fast as language barriers have been coming down, we have been erecting an encryption Tower of Babel.
Thoughts on the Whitehouse.gov switch to Drupal
October 26, 2009
Yesterday, the new media team at the White House announced via the Associated Press that whitehouse.gov is now running on Drupal, the open source content management system. That Drupal implementation is in turn running on a Red Hat Linux system with Apache, MySQL and the rest of the LAMP stack. Apache Solr is the new White House search engine. This move is obviously a big win for open source. While open source is already widespread throughout the government, its adoption by the White House will almost certainly give permission for much wider uptake.
Featured Web 2.0 Summit Video: Marissa Mayer of Google - Announces Twitter Agreement, Demonstrates of Google's New Social Search
By O'Reilly MediaOctober 23, 2009
See all the videos from Web 2.0 Summit in San Francisco.
The importance of ubiquity
By Scott BarnesOctober 23, 2009
I've spent a few years studying the behavioral pattern associated with ubiquity, and I'm surprised at what I've learned along the way. Here right now, I'm going to unload my findings, and it's up to you to keep an open mind about it all and take a deep breath about the subject. Ubiquity is only important to you, the one in the "doing" seat (developing/designing). Ubiquity isn't important as much as the reasons why people will use a given technology in the first place. Ubiquity is simply a scorecard to track whether or not people are choosing NOT to install a plug-in.
10 Ways to Use the Network to Be More Sustainable - Practical Suggestions to Take Action Now
October 22, 2009
We are currently in a pivotal point in our world's history - the choices we make today will impact future generations. We need to change our consumptive habits, adjust our resource dependencies and create more sustainable social, economic and political models. I often get asked, "What can I, as an individual, do right now to better leverage the network and be more sustainable?" I have these 10 suggestions.
Why Google and Bing's Twitter Announcement is Big News - Tweets will finally become first class web citizens
October 21, 2009
Lurking innocently on Google's blog this afternoon, like many of their big announcements, was the bombshell that they have reached an agreement with Twitter to make all tweets searchable. This followed an earlier announcement at the Web 2.0 conference by Microsoft that Bing has also arranged to make tweets searchable.
Featured Web 2.0 Video: A Conversation with Evan Williams - Twitter CEO Evan Williams Optimistic About Revenue and Growth, Notes Level of Commercial Activity on Twitter
By O'Reilly MediaOctober 21, 2009
See all the videos from Web 2.0 Summit in San Francisco.
Four short links: 21 October 2009 - Battlefield Android, DIY Leukemia Hacking, Localisation, Bus Pirates
October 21, 2009
Raytheon Sends Android to Battlefield -- Combining maps and a buddy list, Raytheon is employing Google's Android on the battlefield with the Raytheon Android Tactical System, or RATS. "A soldier could make an unmanned plane a 'buddy,' for instance, and track its progress on a map using his phone. He could then access streaming video from the plane, giving him a bird's eye view of the area. Soldiers could also use the buddy list to trace the locations of other members of their squad." This and more in today's Four Short Links.
Four short links: 20 October 2009 - Politics in The Age of Social Software, Ethernet Patents, Free Book Fear, Programming Exercises
October 20, 2009
Poles, Politeness, and Politics in the Age of Twitter (Stephen Fry) -- A post from the blog of actor Stephen Fry begins with a discussion of a UK storm but rapidly turns into a discussion of fame in the age of Twitter, modern political discourse, the "deadwood press", and The Commons in Twitter Assembled. This and more in today's Four Short Links.
Ignite Show: Kathy Sierra on Feeling Better is Better
By Brady ForrestOctober 20, 2009
If you want to be successful with your customers, you need to make them feel succesful. It's all about them achieving awesome. This week, Kathy Sierra explains some of the secrets for creating passionate customers.
Shopping with AR
October 16, 2009
Much like the farm wife with her Sears catalog, consumers will be able to use simple AR applications to make more informed buying decisions. Some items are well-suited to commerce with AR, but others need image recognition and databases containing all the information a consumer might need. Expect retail outlets and brands that provide fast-moving consumer goods to be among those eager to exploit mobile AR for shopping.
Wolfram|Alpha API to be released later today
By Mike LoukidesOctober 15, 2009
We've just been told that the public API for Wolfram Alpha will be made available later today. The API documentation will be available at http://products.wolframalpha.com/api . As of noon, PDT, that page only redirects to the Alpha home page, but they've promised it will be available sometime this afternoon....
My Conversation with Austan Goolsbee at Web 2.0 Summit
October 15, 2009
He introduces himself as "another tall, skinny guy with big ears and a funny name." Economics adviser to Barack Obama during the campaign, and now a member of the President's Council of Economic Advisers and chief economist of the Economic Recovery Advisory Board, Austan Goolsbee is a key figure in framing the economic thinking of the Obama administration. Perhaps most importantly for those of us in Silicon Valley, he's an economist clued in to the tech world. I'll be interviewing Austan Goolsbee on stage at the Web 2.0 Summit.
Vendor Relationship Management workshop
By Andy OramOctober 15, 2009
Nobody knows you as well as you do. Or do they? Let's run a test. Do you know what percentage of your food bill went to processed products? Or what type of coupons (store coupons, newspaper coupons, etc.) is most likely to get you to switch brands? I bet someone out there knows.This kind of data mining is the modern companion to Customer Relations Management, which is the science of understanding customers and trying to get repeat business. CRM can offer many valuable benefits, but ultimately the control lies with the vendor. A Vendor Relationship Management workshop at Harvard looked at what it would take to leave control with the customers.
Multi-touch and the Flash Platform
October 14, 2009
One of the big announcements at MAX this year was Flash on devices. As the capabilities of devices change, so do the capabilities of the platforms we use to build our applications. One of the latest trends is Multi-touch. In this post, I'll try to shed some light on the upcoming multitouch capabilities in AIR 2.0 and Flash Player 10.1.
Government Ambassadors For Citizen Engagement
October 13, 2009
To the average person, government is represented by an anonymous person on the other end of the phone, a pile of mandatory paperwork, and perhaps at best a friendly neighborhood postal carrier. If you ask the average American not living inside the Beltway to name a single individual who works in the federal government, how would they reply? My guess is that the broad majority of them couldn't give you the first and last name of a federal government employee. In reality they would find it much easier to name their local pharmacist, garage owner, or supermarket manager. From the perspective of the government, this is a shame. How might emerging social technologies help to bridge that gap, in combination with a modification in thinking about government public relations?
User interfaces for AR
October 13, 2009
There is a risk that talk about haptic interfaces and heads up displays for AR will seem like just hype, and certain industry participants fear that over promising and under-delivering could send AR in the same direction as Virtual Reality went a decade ago: into oblivion. That said, new ways of interacting with digital data on the real world are possible and not hype to those who work on them. To appreciate the full potential of new user interaction for AR, a test drive is valuable.
Google Analytics for the Real World: A Conversation with Sharon Biggar of Path Intelligence
October 12, 2009
In preparation for the upcoming Web 2.0 Summit I am posting a few conversations with attendees that embody the Web Squared Theme. Path Intelligence uses sensor technology to understand shopping behavior in retail spaces by detecting and tracking the RF signals from mobile phones. As Sharon Biggar, co-founder, succinctly puts it - "we are like Google Analytics for the real world" giving offline retailers the same visibility on shopping behavior that online retail has enjoyed for years.
A More Public Role for Public Broadcasting: Education
October 9, 2009
Imagine a broadcast network in America that was dedicated to education, where the best educators had the opportunity to produce its programming, and where individuals as well as institutions could develop a new genre of wide-ranging educational programs? Educational programming could elevate the role of teaching in our culture and promote the value of lifelong learning. This blog post explores why education is a more important role for public broadcasting in America, a new role that would re-align PBS with its original mission as an educational network.
How the Zeo sleep device works around the limitations of home monitoring
October 9, 2009
Zeo is part of a trend toward using technology to monitor our own bodies. People have always been concerned about their health, of course, and have tried different things to see what works (including rather absurd superstitions). But now there are ways to bolster one's curiosity with real scientific data. The Zeo carries out sophisticated sleep monitoring by intensive analysis of electronic signals.
Behind the Scenes at O'Reilly Media's Digital Books - Interview with O'Reilly's Andrew Savikas
October 7, 2009
MyMac Magazine's John Nemerovski interviewed O'Reilly's VP of digital initiatives Andrew Savikas about ebook publishing. "The market for individual downloadable ebooks has only recently matured," explained Savikas. "But with the adoption of EPUB as a standard, and the emergence of Kindle and especially iPhone for mobile reading, we've seen a huge uptick in interest and sales of ebooks." Explore the state of the art of electronic publishing from the comfort of your desk. Register today for O'Reilly's Tools of Change for Publishing Online Conference, 8 October.
How Long is Your City's Tail?
By John GeraciOctober 7, 2009
A city that has totally open, unrestricted access to data and partnerships with business has the best chance of becoming the healthy, "long tail" city of the future, with head, "meaty middle" and tail, all working together, all reinforcing each other, all driving each other forward. That's the future of cities. It might be time to ask yourself: how long is your city's tail shaping up to be? The answer may determine, to a large degree, how much your city is a thriving place to live in decades to come.
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